Hidden Treasures

A "dragon master" is depicted in a pendant from the 1st century BC, found at the nomad chief's tombs in Tillya Tepe. The piece is made of gold and decorated with turquoise, garnet, lapis lazuli, carnelian and pearl. Such pieces remain today because they were hidden away in the 1980s by staffers of the National Museum in Kabul. What kept them safe, says Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society, was the code of silence. The exhibition travels to San Francisco's Asian Art Museum in October.

A "dragon master" is depicted in a pendant from the 1st century BC, found at the nomad chief's tombs in Tillya Tepe. The piece is made of gold and decorated with turquoise, garnet, lapis lazuli, carnelian and pearl. Such pieces remain today because they were hidden away in the 1980s by staffers of the National Museum in Kabul. What kept them safe, says Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society, was the code of silence. The exhibition travels to San Francisco's Asian Art Museum in October.